How do you pass No Child Left Behind . . . when you don’t speak English?

It's been known to work. But it's a hard argument to make in Cleveland, where the district has been wedded to deterioration for decades. The assumption is that new teachers will somehow be able to outperform the old. But since the replacements are usually young and inexperienced, it's akin to stocking a baseball team with rookies and then expecting it to make the playoffs.

In Cleveland, Paul Revere Elementary School was the last to be reconstituted, back in 1997. Outgoing Cleveland Teachers Union President Joanne Demarco says it did little if anything to change the place. Since then, there have been many threats, but no school has faced complete reconstitution.

There have been plenty of "semi-reconstituted" schools. Joseph Gallagher is one of them. It happened when the district combined its middle and elementary schools, which led to a massive overhaul of staff. In 2005, according to one teacher, about three quarters of Gallagher's staff changed. The almighty test scores say it hasn't made a difference.

Across the hall from Morell's room is a regular sixth- and seventh-grade class. This is where Tracy Radich teaches math.

Her voice booms into the hallways, even when her door is closed. It's intense and energetic, similar to the voice of a high-school basketball coach. She's the newly elected sergeant at arms for the Cleveland Teachers Union and loves politics. If Anderson Cooper had a 12-hour election special, she'd watch all 12, then stay tuned for extra helpings of Wolf Blitzer.

Radich is up front about Joseph Gallagher's deathwatch. "It's a constant threat hanging over your head," she says. "It's very difficult."

In her mind, testing creates students who are jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. If her class has trouble grasping a concept like mean, median, and mode, she doesn't have the extra time to spend. The test forces her to push on to the next unit. She has to make sure that her students have at least seen the material.

Based upon their scores from the previous year, students are broken down into five groups: limited, basic, proficient, advanced, and accelerated. If they move up one level, the school is okay. If they don't, teachers can consider themselves screwed.

"The tests are still given one week out of the year, and that determines everything," says Radich. "It's like if someone came to your work and watched you for one to two hours, and judged you and everything you do at work based upon those two hours. That's essentially what it comes down to — success or failure in two hours."

But those are the rules they play under. So teachers like Radich are forced to concentrate on the borderline students. They're the most important kids in the classroom, since the school's fate hinges upon their improvement. Everyone else takes a back seat. Think of it as the NBA determining its post-season seedings by how well teams can get players like Dwayne Jones to perform.

One subgroup that plays a critical role is the special-education kids. At Gallagher, 250 students have some sort of disability, ranging from mild autism to severe mental retardation. Fifty take an alternative test to measure their progress, which doesn't affect the school's rating. Another hundred or so aren't yet in the third grade, the year when their scores begin to count. This leaves around 75 who must take the state test.

Teacher Keri Waring speaks like the daughter of a college president, because, well, she's the daughter of a college president. Her biggest complaint is that the test is geared for the kind of children congressmen know — those raised with money whose parents read to them at night and enforce lights-out at a reasonable hour. It's not geared for refugees on 65th Street in America's poorest city.

What frustrates her is how others see Gallagher as the typical Cleveland school — rough, overcrowded, and failing. She cringes every time a new initiative comes down from on high. No plan can fix the endemic problems of poverty, parenting, and kids who don't understand the language you speak.

"But all of this is political talk," she admits. "We still have to pass the test in April."

At 2:30, students swell out of class and make their way home. Francescani returns to her storage closet to plan the next day. Aweys sits in the faculty lounge and dreams about affording classes at Tri-C. Radich sprints off to the union office. Morell switches around her seating chart, experimenting to find the perfect fit.

Outside the building, buses and cars swing in and out of the parking lot. Rhone waves goodbye and politely reminds students that it's not okay to bomb each other with snowballs.

Time before the test is short. But Joseph Gallagher has made it through another day.